Project Life Update ::: July 15-21

Yes, I’m behind on Project Life. About all I’m managing to get done right now with homeschooling is uploading and printing the week’s pictures. That way they are at least waiting on me when I get a moment to fill in my journaling cards. I found a very neat tutorial here and have started laying out my pages with post-its. Makes is super simple to see where my pictures go and what gaps I have to fill.
I used lots of summer colors this week - I used the July Project Life kit from Splendid Fiins almost exclusively and the colors just fly off the pages. I love them.

On the left:

• Notes on a new job for T.
• a boy that crazy about swimming
• school books in the mail

I cut down a 12x12 page that had spots for six 4x6 photos and we had a little insert about N1’s week at overnight camp. She did the journaling on these two cards (both from the Bridgeport mini kit).

She wrote us notes each day so those (of course!) had to be included. I just stuck them in a 6x6 pocket I had and left the top open. I’m sure we will want to pull them out and reread them someday! An extra picture from camp was stuck in the back.

There was another 8 1/2x11 insert that I didn’t photograph that just had a piece of artwork one of the girls did and something that N2 wrote about her recent trip to Guatemala.
On the right:

• Saying goodbye to one of our buddies that moved away.
• Picking our girl up at camp. You see the liberal use of washi tape around this photo. It’s a homemade flip up pocket that you can see in greater detail below.
• Photos from a friend’s karaoke party
• The first journaling card is a pic of the boy shooting his toy gun along side Han and Luke one night as we watched Star Wars. I died at the cuteness.
• Another little friend’s birthday party
• ANOTHER birthday. This one for my sister. Covering up incriminating evidence so I don’t get in trouble. : )

You can see my handy flip up pockets here. The flip up in the journaling card spot is also from Splendid Fiins – so handy for an extra bit of hidden journaling.

And that’s all she wrote for this week.
Project Life is a product and a system created by Becky Higgins and available on Amazon.com, DigitalProjectLife.com, and many major craft retailers. It can be anything you want it to be. You can view all my posts about Project Lifehere. I'm always happy to answer questions about how Project Life works for me, if you have any.

Around the Web, a New Jelly Telly Post, and a Giveaway!

• I have a new blog up of at Club Jelly Telly today … all about taking a deep breath as we are gearing up for the beginning of a new school year and remember who is the one worthy of our trust when we get anxious. Read more here.

• Doesn’t this look like a fun little online workshop? And, if you blog about it, it’s free! So there you go. I’ve recently found Edie’s blog (Life {in} Grace) and wish I had tons of time to dig around her archives and get to know her better.

• I’ve been perusing a few of my favorite posts from Elizabeth Foss and Kendra Fletcher and trying to fire myself up for school this year. This is a busy season in our house with a VERY active 2 going on 3 year old boy and I am in need of encouragement for me and a few ideas in my pocket to keep this boy out of trouble and busy while we do school. If you aren’t subscribed to these two blogs (or at least making generous use of their archives) you need to be.
• As a fun little back-to-school treat for you, the few and faithful that read here, I’ve got a giveaway. (I don’t know the last time I’ve had one of those!) I’ve got an extra unopened copy of Volume 1 of What’s in the Bible that I’d love to mail to a new home. If you are interested, leave a comment on this post by Friday afternoon and I’ll draw a winner. (Make sure you leave me an email with your comment so I know how to track you down.) For one extra entry, you can facebook or tweet about this giveaway, and then leave me a comment with the link. Good luck!

This contest is closed - congrats Tami!

Back to School

With back to school, comes the need to set new routines and schedules, earlier bedtimes, and reinforcing general school time behavior. Hopefully I’ll have something worthwhile to say in space sooner rather than later, but as if posts weren’t sporadic enough, they will probably be more so for the immediate future.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to be back soon. : )

Project Life ::: April 15-21

Another catch up week here – lots of photos and just a few words. I had one insert which I didn’t photograph. It was the girls’ testing sheets from their CC memory work and I didn’t feel it exciting enough to share. : )

On the left:

• the boy and the dog reading together
• documenting our testing. The journaling card shot shows N1 testing with her tutor and below that is the happy testers finally done.
• another CC shot in the middle – this one flips up (you can see it later down in the post) from N2’s class. Another mom sent me these pictures and I am so thankful for them! I wasn’t able to go visit her class due to tutoring and I hated not having any pictures from her year.
• snuggling a brand new babe

On the right:

• books that were added to our library for this fall’s schooling. It’s never to early to start accumulating books!
• from small group on a Thursday night
• my tree climbing duo
• a shot of my mom shirt that I wore to N1’s games this spring
• N2 and T practicing for church

Love this photo of the four girls! And my flip-up washi taped pocket did the trick to add some journaling.


Kits used (not a lot this week!):

• Midnight digi kit
• Wellington childhood kit

Project Life is a product and a system created by Becky Higgins and available on Amazon.com, DigitalProjectLife.com, and many major craft retailers. It can be anything you want it to be. You can view all my posts about Project Lifehere. I'm always happy to answer questions about how Project Life works for me, if you have any.

Reading to Know Bookclub ::: Wind in the Willows, the Conclusion

My thoughts on Wind in the Willows are over at Reading to Know. A scattered summation, but a book I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with this summer!

The Clarity of God's Word

I recently took a trip to the shores of Lake Erie to visit some of my husband’s family and enjoy a day or two of sand under my feet. I love (LOVE) to take photos and scrapbook them so I had my big Nikon DSLR with me, as well as my camera phone, to capture shots. Since I’m normally trying to keep up with four kids while I’m out and about, it’s been rare of late that I even pull out my big camera and take it anywhere. I am usually a strictly iPhone girl because of size and convenience, so I was really enjoying playing with the good camera as we were out on the beach and taking advantage of getting some close ups of my munchkins...

You can read the rest over on the Jelly Telly blog!

Looking for Light

I’ve recently become acquainted (and enamored) with a new-to-me blog called Pink Ronnie. I discovered her through Project Life earlier this year and have enjoyed a peek into her scrapbooking process and style.

One of the things that I have admired about her photos is her constant search for light and shadow in her home. It’s inspired me to look around my room for some fresh perspective on our home.

We have lived here now for a little over two years and while I still am so thankful and grateful for this beautiful home we have, some of the newness is wearing off and I’m forgetting to be as thankful as I once was. There are dings in door facings and scuffs on baseboards. The school room is the hottest room in the house during the summer which is somewhat frustrating as it’s where we spend most of our time.

However, in the grand scheme of these, the inconveniences are SO MINOR. We have plenty of room, clean water, a roof over our head that doesn’t leak and the blessings could go on.

Sometimes a little refocusing is in order. I’m thankful for this lesson that is working on my heart.

Project Life ::: April 22-28, 2013

Today we had an unheard of Saturday. One where absolutely NOTHING was on the calendar. Fabulous. It has been a day of getting things done around here. T has been doing some home maintenance kinds of things, and I’ve made a quick run out for produce and ice cream (a.k.a. necessities!) Otherwise, we’ve been working on projects and just enjoying the day as a family! To that end, I managed to get the journaling finished on THREE PL weeks. Yahoo. : ) I’m only sharing one of them on the blog. The other two were both weeks that wrapped up tons of end of the year activities and programs and I just didn’t have the stamina to mess with photographing and writing a post about those two weeks. I may share a few highlights later, but today, it’s all about April.

On the left:

• I made a title card from the digi Kraft kit because I needed a spot to put this great picture of a cow!
• N1 reading at someone’s soccer game.
• a great night at softball where she got one of the game balls
• another shot at another soccer practice

In the journaling card slots there is a picture of the boy at a softball (lots of game and practice shots in this week!) and one that is a screen shot from my phone after run.
On this side we have:

• a field trip documented
• a boy playing peek-a-boo
• the one photo from a party for my parents’ birthday (complete with photobombing nephew)
• T and the boy out for a daddy-date for pizza

I needed a place to put my journaling for the our field trip to Hatcher Dairy so I used one of Splendid Fiins flips digi journaling cards. I forgot I had these, but it worked great to get some extra writing in!

Martha Stewart file labels seem to make it in almost every layout.

Super simple and so glad to see another one in the books.
Kits used:

• Midnight digi kit
• letter stickers from assorted Studio Calico project life kits
• Kraft digi kit
• Creative Bubble digi journaling card from her vacation journaling set

Project Life is a product and a system created by Becky Higgins and available on Amazon.com, DigitalProjectLife.com, and many major craft retailers. It can be anything you want it to be. You can view all my posts about Project Life here. I'm always happy to answer questions about how Project Life works for me, if you have any.

Gearing Up for School with Lapbooks ::: a Review

It is hard to believe that two weeks from today we will start our 4th year of homeschooling … I still feel like such a novice at this! We are planning on starting the first full week of August, and then we will add in Classical Conversations at the end of the month. Gives us a few weeks to get our feet wet with home and new fall routines before adding in our outside classes!

This year, I’m hoping to do a much better job of working with the girls on our CC memory work. Last year – to be true – we were flying by the seat of our pants as first year CC-ers and tutor. We never got into a great routine of reviewing the material other than in the car, and then, it would be just certain subjects like the timeline song over and over and over again. And review? We were doing good just to KEEP UP.

That’s why, when Karen Gill from Wisdom and Righteousness offered to send me the complete set of her Cycle 2 Lapbooks in exchange for a review I jumped at the chance! These are set up so that you can do them in the traditional file folder format or in a binder. We are going to go with a three prong folder for our books and then review them in six week increments. If needed, then I can also move pages around so that they are grouped by subject if there is a particular area someone needs practice in.

Please note these are not a substitution for the Foundations book that you purchase as part of CC – in fact, without it, you will be hard pressed to complete the lapbooks because there are a lot of blanks to fill in.

Her lapbook elements are very well done. Almost a little on the complicated side in my opinion, coming from someone who has mostly done the free lapbooks from Homeschool Share. However, she gives very details instruction on how to assemble the parts which I appreciated and gives recommendations of what type of paper she suggests for different parts. I ended up just making mine with regular copy paper and will have some gluing to do to assemble some of the parts back to back.

For my up and coming fourth grader, who I am highly suggesting work towards memory master this coming year (mastery/memorization of all seven CC subjects), I think she will be able to take this resource and fly with it. I’ll probably need to give a little guidance on the assembly of some of the parts, but overall, I think she can manage most of it independently. For my rising second grader, I think she will need more help assembling her lapbook and even cutting out some of the more complicated pieces. (However, cutting out the parts is one of the things I mind the least – put on a movie in the evening and sit down with my scissors and I can get it knocked out in no time flat). : ) As for my third student, I will mostly likely NOT use this lapbook with B. While she is moving on to 1st grade this year, she is not reading or writing well enough to put together one of these lapbooks (I can give more details on this if asked), so she I will continue to do all of her memory work orally – with lots of signing, singing, and movement!

Thank you so much to Karen for shooting a copy of these lapbooks my way! They are going to be a GREAT resource for my older girls this coming year and I’m looking forward on working with them to put these together.

I received a copy of the complete Cycle 2 memory lapbooks for the purpose of this review – no other compensation was given. These are my honest thoughts on these lapbooks and am happy to answer any further questions on them if there is something you are interested in knowing about.

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu

While on our vacation last week, I caught sight of a book laying on one of the tables: Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu. My cousin-in-law’s sweet 4th grader told me that she had read this last year in school and it was so good. Always on the lookout for books for N1 (or new authors to explore), I ordered a copy on Amazon to check out.

Breadcrumbs is a modern retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen. (This is a fairy tale that I was unfamiliar with but I got the gist of it thanks to a quick read-up on it via Wikipedia.) Jack and Hazel are best friends. In Hazel’s small world of divorced parents and as a new 5th grader in the local public school, Jack is her only friend. The relationship is severed when Jack gets a piece of glass from a broken enchanted mirror in his eye and it hardens his heart to Hazel. Hazel can’t understand what has happened, and when Jack mysteriously disappears, she goes in search of him. Hazel has to find her way through an enchanted forest, discerning who she can trust and who isn’t safe, as she searches for her friend. Based on the little that I know of the original story, I found this a clever modern retelling that I found well done.

I’ve recently been listening, learning, and thinking about the importance of reading fairy tales to my munchkins. Sarah at Amongst Lovely Things tipped me off to a talk by Andrew Pudewa (of Institute for Excellence in Writing) on Fairy Tales and the Moral Imagination that was excellent (and worth the few dollars for the download). I won’t due justice to the talk, but one of the things that I pulled away was the danger in modern literature in taking those characters that are considered universally evil, and making them the hero or good guy in the story. In doing this, it blurs the lines between good and evil – everything is gray because any character can be good or evil when in reality (and in Scripture which is what my reality is based on) there IS a definite black and white / good and evil in the world. In traditional fairy tales, the good character is ALWAYS good, and evil bad guy is ALWAYS evil and these stories reinforce that truth and that it is noble to fight for good at all times. This is a picture of what we see in the Bible and what I want and need to be constantly reinforcing with my kids.

That tangent to explain that I liked this story. There was a clear evil that Jack had to be rescued from and it was through Hazel’s love for him that this was accomplished. I don’t know that I would hand this off to the minimum age recommended on the book cover (8-12). It seems like it would be better understood and discussed by an older age (10 and up), depending on the maturity of the child.

If you are interested in some more reading on fairy tales and the benefits to reading them to your children some links to pass on:

- Sarah blogs about this so much better than I could in this post and this one and I highly recommend them to you.

- Carrie (at Reading to Know) talking on it here, here and here.

- Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Childis on my TBR list and was the free book at this year’s Classical Conversations practicum.

- T is reading A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle for Your Child's Mind right now and I hope to steal it off his stack soon.

Affiliate Amazon links scattered throughout. : )0

Vacation Memories